[360]Sir Arthur was anxious to engage and defeat Victor before he was joined by the forces of Joseph from Madrid, and of Sebastiani from La Mancha. He therefore dispatched Sir Robert Wilson, at the head of a considerable body of Spanish and Portuguese troops, on the way towards Madrid; and Sir Robert executed this duty with so much promptitude and address that he threw himself into the rear of Victor at Escalona, only eight leagues from the capital. On the 22nd of July the united armies of Britain and Portugal attacked Victor's outposts at Talavera, and drove them in. The stupid old Cuesta was nowhere to be seen; and the next day, the 23rd, when the British were again in position, ready to attack the French, the day was lost, because Cuesta said he would not fight on a Sunday. This tried Sir Arthur's patience past endurance, for every moment was precious, and he wrote on the occasion"I find General Cuesta more and more impracticable every day. It is impossible to do business with him, and very uncertain that any operation will succeed in which he has any concern. He has quarrelled with some of his principal officers, and I understand they are all dissatisfied with him." The opportunity of beating Victor was thus lost. At midnight he quitted Talavera, and retreated to Santa Olalla, and thence towards Torrijos, to form a junction with Sebastiani. The next morning Wellesley took possession of Talavera, but he could not pursue the enemy, for he says, "he found it impossible to procure a single mule or a cart in Spain." Neither could he procure food for his army. He says his troops had actually been two days in want of provisions, though Cuesta's camp abounded with them. He declared that, under such treatment by those that he had come to save, he would return to Portugal before his army was ruined. On this, Cuesta became as wildly and madly active as he had been before stubbornly passive. He dashed forward after Victor alone, never stopping till he ran against the rear of the[576] united army of Victor and Sebastiani, at Torrijos. Wellesley was quite sure what the result would be, and in a few days Cuesta came flying back with a confused mass of men, bullocks, flocks of sheep, baggage waggons, and artillery, beaten and pursued by the enemy.The Congress of Vienna, interrupted by the last razzia of Buonaparte, now resumed its sittings, and the conditions between France and the Allies were finally settled, and treaties embodying them were signed at Paris by Louis XVIII. on the 20th of November. France was rigorously confined to the frontier of 1790, losing the additions conferred on it by the first Treaty of Paris; and to prevent any danger of a recurrence of the calamities which had called the Allies thus a second time to Paris, they were to retain in their hands seventeen of the principal frontier[118] fortresses, and one hundred and fifty thousand of their soldiers were to be quartered, and maintained by France, in different parts of the kingdom. The term of their stay was not to exceed five years, and that term might be curtailed should the aspect of Europe warrant it. The Allied sovereigns also insisted on the payment of the enormous expenses which had been occasioned by this campaign of the Hundred Daysthe amount of which was estimated at seven hundred millions of francs. This sum, however, was not to be exacted at once, but to be paid by easy instalments.
But whilst Gifford was thus demolishing an outbreak of bad taste, a much more remarkable evidence that those who lay claim to good taste frequently have it not was given by the appearance of several new plays and other documents attributed to Shakespeare. The chief of these was "Kynge Varrtygerne," a tragedy, edited by Samuel Ireland. Numbers of persons of high name and pretension, as Dr. Parr, Boswell, Pye, the laureate, Chalmers, the editor of an issue of "British Poets," Pinkerton, a writer of all sorts of things, etc., became enthusiastic believers and admirers of these pretended discoveries. They turned out to be impudent forgeries by the son of the editor, named William Henry Ireland, and are in reality such trash that they are a melancholy proof of how little value, from some learned persons, is the adoration of Shakespeare. Malone, in an "Inquiry" into the authenticity of these writings, in 1796, completely exposed their spuriousness. Pinkerton, one of their most zealous advocates, himself perpetrated a similar forgery of a volume of Scottish poems, issued as ancient ones. He enjoyed the particular patronage of Horace Walpole.Spain and Portugal are so bound together by natural sympathy that they generally share the same vicissitudes. Bad feeling had arisen between the national party and the Government in consequence of the appointment of Prince Ferdinand, the husband of the queen, to be commander-in-chief of the army. Other causes increased the popular discontent, which was at its height when the public was electrified by the news of the Spanish Revolution. The Ministers were obliged to make concessions; but, besides being inadequate, they were too late. The steamboat from Oporto was loaded with opposition members, who were received with the most enthusiastic demonstrations of welcome. On the 9th of September the clubs had everything arranged for a revolution, and a mixed array of troops of the line, ca?adors, and National Guards, proclaimed the Constitution adopted by John VI.; and, having sung a constitutional hymn, they appointed a deputation, headed by Viscount Sa Bandiera, to wait upon Queen Donna Maria. She had first contemplated resistance, but the army would not act against the people. The National Guards were in possession of the city, having occupied the Rocio Square in Lisbon all night, and in the morning they were informed that the queen had yielded to their wishes, appointing a new Ministry, with Bandiera at its head. Some of the most obnoxious of the ex-Ministers took refuge from popular vengeance on board the ships of the British squadron lying in the Tagus. Most of the peers protested against the Revolution; but it was an accomplished fact, and they were obliged to acquiesce.GEORGE I.Meanwhile Lord Ashley, a staunch upholder of the Corn Laws, in a letter to his constituents of Dorsetshire declared his opinion "that the destiny of the Corn Laws was fixed," and that it would be wise to consider "how best to break the force of an inevitable blow." Mr. Bickham and Captain Estcott, also strong defenders of the landlords' monopoly, published their conviction that the Corn Laws were no longer tenable; and on the 22nd of November Lord John Russell, who was at Edinburgh, addressed a letter to the electors of the City of London, which was duly circulated throughout the kingdom, and which contained the following remarkable passages:[445]
